Day: June 29, 2024

Since shortly after the full-scale war, “Exen” has been taking vehicles from his native Poland and transporting them to Ukrainian soldiers at the front.

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VOA Newscasts

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date June 29, 2024

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

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Iran warns Israel of ‘obliterating’ war if Lebanon attacked

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date June 29, 2024

Tehran, IRAN — Iran on Saturday warned that “all Resistance Fronts,” a grouping of Iran and its regional allies, would confront Israel if it attacks Lebanon.

The comment from Iran’s mission to New York comes with fears of a wider regional war involving Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.

Such exchanges have escalated this month, alongside bellicose rhetoric from both sides. Israel’s military said plans for a Lebanon offensive had been “approved and validated,” prompting Hezbollah to respond that none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict.

In a post on social media platform X, the Iranian mission said it “deems as psychological warfare the Zionist regime’s propaganda about intending to attack Lebanon.”

But, it added, “should it embark on full-scale military aggression, an obliterating war will ensue. All options, incl. the full involvement of all Resistance Fronts, are on the table.”

The war in Gaza began in October when Hamas Palestinian militants attacked southern Israel. Iran, which backs Hamas, has praised the attack as a success but has denied any involvement.

Alongside Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israel, Iran-backed rebels in Yemen have repeatedly struck commercial ships in the Red Sea area in what they say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Iran also backs other groups in the region.

The Islamic republic has not recognized Israel since the 1979 revolution that toppled Iran’s United States-backed shah.

Fears of regional war also soared in April, after an air strike that leveled Iran’s consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

Iran hit back with an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13 and 14.

Iran’s state media later reported explosions in the central province of Isfahan as U.S. media quoted American officials saying Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes on its arch-rival.

Tehran downplayed the reported Israeli raid.

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Gazans living in ‘unbearable’ conditions, UN says

Post author By Mike Nova
Post date June 29, 2024

Geneva — Gazans are forced to live in bombed-out buildings or camp next to giant piles of trash, a United Nations spokesperson said Friday, denouncing the “unbearable” conditions in the besieged territory.

Louise Wateridge from UNRWA, the U.N. agency supporting Palestinian refugees, described the “extremely dire” living conditions in the Gaza Strip.

“It’s really unbearable,” she told reporters in Geneva, via video-link from central Gaza.

Wateridge, who returned Wednesday after four weeks outside the territory, said that even in that time the situation had “significantly deteriorated.”

“Today, it has to be the worst it’s ever been. I don’t doubt that tomorrow again will be the worst it’s ever been,” she said.

Nearly nine months into the war between Israel and Hamas, Wateridge said, the Gaza Strip had been “destroyed.”

She said she had been “shocked” on returning to Khan Yunis in central Gaza.

“The buildings are skeletons, if at all. Everything is rubble,” she said. “And yet people are living there again.”

“There’s no water there, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food,” she said. “And now, people are living back in these buildings that are empty shells,” with sheets covering the gaps left by blown-out walls.

With no bathrooms, “people are relieving themselves anywhere they can.”

“Adding misery”

The war in Gaza started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 37,700 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

Wateridge said the struggle to bring fuel into Gaza and distribute it safely was having an impact on the ability to deliver aid.

“Without the fuel, the humanitarian response really grinds to a halt,” she said.

About 150 meters (490 feet) away from where she was speaking, she said, a pile of around 100,000 tons of waste was building up, with makeshift tents pitched all around it.

“The population is living among it,” she said. “With the temperatures rising, it’s really adding misery to the living conditions.”

Friends “unrecognizable”

Wateridge said that before the war, sanitation units would clear all the trash from refugee camps to landfill sites.

Now, appeals to the Israeli authorities for access to the landfill sites were frequently denied, she said.

And lacking fuel meant that even when access was granted, trucks could not go in to clear out the mess.

Wateridge said food insecurity in the territory was having a visible effect on the population.

“When I see my colleagues, my friends here, they’re visibly unrecognizable because having such unsustained access to food for so long, you start to age, you look unhealthy, your skin changes color,” she said.

“Waiting for death”

Thursday saw the first medical evacuations from Gaza into neighboring Egypt since the Rafah border crossing was closed in early May, when Israeli forces took over the Palestinian side.

The World Health Organization says 10,000 patients need to be evacuated from Gaza for treatment.

Wateridge said one of her own UNRWA colleagues, Abdullah, had to wait for two months before being evacuated in April. He was injured in a strike and had his legs amputated in late February.

Since then, he had spent weeks in the devastated Al Shifa hospital — once Gaza’s largest medical complex — when it was under siege.

And he spent two months waiting in a medical tent, “some days waiting for death,” she said. “Multiple times, he very nearly lost his life.”

Wateridge said that in late April, she visited Abdullah with a colleague who “donated her blood on the spot to him to keep him alive.”

“It is not acceptable for people to be experiencing this and be treated like this,” she said.